Excavating the Tribe of Reuben

We were lucky. There’s no other way to explain it. When our archaeological survey team, part of a larger expedition known as the Madaba Plains Project, discovered Tall al-‘Umayri1 in 1976, we had no idea it would yield great treasures.2 But now, almost 25 years later and after seven excavation seasons (beginning in 1984), we can only stand back and marvel as the Holy Land’s best-preserved site from the time of the Judges slowly emerges from beneath more than three millennia of accumulated dust and debris.